Nomar trade ‘a bad deal’? Umm, maybe not

Jordan and I have only been at this writing-about-sports thing for a few weeks now, and already I’m learning a danger of the craft — that an opinion I held just a few days ago can seem ridiculous under the light of a different day.

So I could sympathize a bit with Sports Illustrated writer Mark Bechtel when I stumbled across an old column of his a few days ago, while I was writing a post about the retirement of Nomar Garciaparra.

Bechtel, writing in the summer of 2004, disagreed with GM Theo Epstein’s decision to trade the shortstop, although he agreed Nomar had become a cancer in the clubhouse. He wrote:

“Sox fans are lining up to praise Epstein for having the guts to make the necessary move and trade Nomar. All I see is the bottom line: He traded a two-time batting champ, who is the best shortstop in the history of the franchise, and he got nothing in return. Sorry Sox fans: It’s a bad deal.”

Umm, yeah. That “nothing in return” was Orlando Cabrera, a key piece of the team’s’ first championship in 86 years, and Doug Mientkiewicz, the guy who caught the final out of the World Series.

There was no way, of course, for Bechtel to know the trade he was criticizing what might just be the best trade in the history of sports. He was just doing his job, expressing an opinion later proven colossally and ludicrously wrong.

The fact that, six years later, it’s right there on the Internet for everyone to see … well, that’s kind of unfortunate.